Facility lets humans get close to wolves

Saturday

Aug 23, 2014 at 12:01 AMAug 24, 2014 at 9:17 AM

CHIPLEY, Fla. - At Seacrest Wolf Preserve in northern Florida, owners Cynthia and Wayne Watkins say they raise their wolves to become accustomed to humans - and, for a $25 fee, they let visitors mingle with a wolf pack.

CHIPLEY, Fla. — At Seacrest Wolf Preserve in northern Florida, owners Cynthia and Wayne Watkins say they raise their wolves to become accustomed to humans — and, for a $25 fee, they let visitors mingle with a wolf pack.

It lets wolves become ambassadors for their species, they say, and helps people become advocates for wolves.

“We offer one of the rarest opportunities in the world for humans to see wolves up close and personal,” Cynthia Watkins said.

The Watkinses estimate that Seacrest gets 10,000 visitors a year.

But some wolf experts worry that Seacrest might be allowing wolves and humans to get too close.

“They are still unpredictable because they are wild animals,” said Dave Mech, a senior research assistant with the U.S. Geological Survey who has spent decades studying wolves.

Seacrest requires visitors to watch an educational video before they interact with the wolves, has trained wolf handlers on hand during every tour and allows no children younger than 6 to take a tour, Watkins said.

The Seacrest preserve grew out of her passion for raising huskies, the sled dogs with a wolflike appearance. That evolved into providing a home for wolves in need of relocation and later into a captive breeding program.

The 30 gray, Arctic and British Columbian wolves, with names including Liberty, Rio, Spirit Prince and Utah, are separated into packs. Each pack has several acres to roam. On a recent afternoon, Cynthia Watkins sat on a log bench surrounded by seven howling gray wolves. Watkins joined in their howling.

“Little Red Riding Hood was wrong,” she said. “The wolf is not the bad guy but indeed a very important keystone species.”